Norwich City fan Ed Seaman’s column: Defence holding Canaries back

The seemingly endless road to Championship promotion was never going to be a smooth one for Norwich City, and you’d be naive to believe anything different.

It has to be accepted, even at this level, that Alex Neil’s side are going to lose games, and while criticism of the performance against Preston is entirely justifiable, we have to give them credit and move on.

Perhaps I should hold my hands up – labelling Carrow Road ‘a fortress’ last week was always going to be a precursor to our first home defeat of the season. I’ll learn from that mistake in the future.

But in all seriousness, when you are as sloppy as we are at the back, you have to score goals – something City were unable to do last weekend.

The statistics don’t lie; City’s defensive record is poor. Only five teams have conceded more goals than us (19) – the highest placed of those, Barnsley, in 12th.

In terms of clean sheets, only four teams have recorded less. City’s last was more than two months ago.

Granted, stats can be meaningless, but we can’t be needing to score at least two goals to win a game.

And that’s a particularly important message to carry into tomorrow’s trip to Brighton — the team with the lowest number of goals conceded (9) and the most clean sheets (9 compared to City’s 2).

It is no great surprise to see Chris Hughton manage a well-drilled side. However, keep it tight and I’m confident our offensive talent can shine through.

Finally this week, it was disappointing to see City exit the EFL Cup, partly down to some woeful penalties, in a game we really should have won.

One man who impressed me, however, was Louis Thompson – and with Jonny Howson out for the next two months, now could be his time to shine.